


Love is Love: The Marriage of Lirael and Nicholas Sayre

by dark_pookha



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Acceptance, Community: HPFT, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9063136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_pookha/pseuds/dark_pookha
Summary: Nick and Lirael are wed. Nick learns that Love is Love.
A Christmas gift for Beeezie.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beeezie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeezie/gifts).



The Wedding of Lirael and Nicholas Sayre

 

Lirael had already gone when Nick woke up. He touched her spot on the bed they shared in the Abhorsen’s apartments in the Clayr’s glacier. It was cold, so she’d been gone for a while. He knew she would have risen earlier and gone with Sabriel to get prepared for the big day. He rose, stretched, automatically looked at his wrist for the time and then chuckled. His watch had stopped working long ago, falling apart in a clang of spent springs and tiny rusty cogs.

He took one step away from the bed, and a sending immediately started pushing him toward the large bathroom. Nick let himself be pushed along and toward a tub that another sending was filling with water. He took off his nightclothes and let the sending fold them and put them away as he got into the scalding tub. Immediately a third sending came into the room and wrapped a hot towel around his face. He soaked for a few minutes as the tub filled, then the third sending removed the towel and lathered his face thickly from a mug of shaving soap.

Nick still flinched back involuntarily when the sending lifted a straight razor, but then relaxed again. He’d been shaved by this sending before and never been cut. He kept still as the scrape, scrape of the razor against his skin went by. When the sending had finished with Nick’s sparse beard and mustache, it pushed his head forward and trimmed the back of his neck neatly. It also cut off a few scraggly stray hairs from around his ears and forehead. Satisfied, it retreated to clean and strop the razor.

The first two sendings came back and scrubbed him thoroughly, then dried him when he got of the tub. Normally, he would dry himself and take over dressing from here, but the way his hand shook today, he let the sendings do it. After they had dried him, they smeared a very light, floral-scented lotion over his whole body; the air in the Clayr’s glacier could be very dry and his skin cracked if he didn’t moisturize. He sniffed. He thought the lotion smelled of heather.

He looked at himself in the mirror in the bedroom. The sending had done an excellent job shaving him and trimming his fair hair. Over the two years he’d spent in the Old Kingdom, he’d come back to his health, and while thin, he wasn’t skeletal anymore. He examined the clothes he’d been dressed in. He’d requested a formal tuxedo and the tailor had done her best with Nick’s instructions and drawings. The legs were a bit voluminous, and the tails of the tux a little long, but everything else was as he remembered. He knew how strange he would look to the people of the Old Kingdom, but he wanted something familiar today, other than just Lirael’s gentle touch.

His boutonnière was empty, so he went to the vase of fresh flowers that the sending somehow always kept by the side of the bed. He couldn’t quite find what he wanted, so he took an aster and concentrated, drawing on the Charter. The spell came to him easily, transmuting the aster to a thistle bloom. He broke it off carefully and pinned it into the boutonnière. He looked himself over once more, then nodded.

“Right, time to go, old boy,” he said to himself.

When he opened the door, there were three women outside instead of the usual one guard. They all snapped to attention as he opened the door.

“Good morning, Nick,” said the tall, thin woman nearest him. She was wearing a beautiful blue silk dress with poufs of white lace at the ends of the sleeves and hems. She had a lace snood around her thick blonde hair.

“Good morning, Sarelle.”

He turned to the shortest. “Good morning, Terael.”

“Good morning, Nick,” she said. She was wearing a low-cut, tight gold dress that emphasized her hips and bosom. Sarelle glanced at them appreciatively and Nick pretended not to notice. She wore her hair in a tight, braided queue that trailed down her back.

The armored guard stepped forward and said ceremoniously. “Sarelle and Terael, do you take charge and responsibility for the curiosity, Nicholas Sayre?”

Nick’s mouth still quirked about being labelled as a curiosity, but he didn’t say anything.

“We do so swear,” Sarelle and Terael intoned together.

They started off down the hall, holding hands with Nick trailing behind them. They knew the way, and he had to admit that if he hadn’t had guards with him all the time, he would have become lost in the Clayr’s glacier. A lot of the twisty passages looked alike to him still.

They came to passages and staircases that were familiar to him, finally and he knew they were near.

“Do you have the time?” he asked Sarelle nervously.

“Don’t worry, we’re not late.” She laughed, and her laugh was a tinkling of chimes.

Terael smiled at her, and gripped her hand tighter. “They won’t start without us, don’t worry.”

Nick smiled. “Oh, I have no fear of that, I just didn’t want to be late.”

Only a moment later, they stood outside what Nick knew to be Sanar and Ryelle’s private chamber.

The door opened and the twins stood on the other side, resplendent in matching silver dresses, and with the crown of the Voice of the Watch on Sanar’s head. They greeted Nick, Sarelle and Terael with hugs.

“Are you ready?” they asked in unison.

Nick nodded, and Sarelle and Terael both simply said, “Yes.”

The twins led the three of them into a small sitting room. Lirael stood there with Sabriel at her side. On the other side of the room, Touchstone leaned against the wall, a slight smile on his face.

Touchstone wore his formal armor, which shone with evidence of much polishing. He looked every inch the regal king. Sabriel wore a dress of blue with silver keys embroidered into it. It was an old-fashioned style even in the Old Kingdom that covered her from neck to ankles, with long full sleeves, but also clung to her tightly.

But Nick’s eyes were drawn to Lirael. She wore a dress of the same shade as her half-sister, also with silver keys. But it also had golden stars on a green field on it. It was a more modern cut than Sabriel’s, with a lower neckline (although not as low as Terael’s, Nick noticed), and cap sleeves that left her arms bare. She had brushed her long, black hair out and left it unbound and flowing over her back. He didn’t often see her with her hair unbound; except, he thought, in bed. Her golden hand gleamed. He moved to her, stood on her right and took her golden hand in his. She leaned in and kissed him. Golden Charter light spilled from where their hands touched and filled the room.

“Time enough for that later,” Touchstone’s voice said, breaking their reverie. They pulled back from the kiss, and Nick released her hand. The Charter light faded. Touchstone moved to stand next to Sabriel and put an arm around her.

Sarelle and Terael moved up to stand next to Nick and Lirael. Sanar and Ryelle smiled at both couples and stood in front of them.

Nick and Lirael turned to face each other, and took each other’s right hands, and then the other’s left hands, standing with their hands in an ‘X’. Sarelle and Terael on the other side mirrored them.

_He had first met Sarelle and Terael, waiting outside Sanar and Ryelle’s door to meet with them just like he and Lirael. He’d been shocked at first to find that these women were here to get married, too. Where he came from that didn’t happen. They obviously saw the confusion in his face and Terael asked him what was wrong._

_“I—In Ancelstierre, women don’t marry other women,” he said._

_“Why not?” Sarelle asked._

_“It’s just not done.” His cheeks flamed. Homosexuality wasn’t talked about where he came from. Everyone knew it happened, he’d seen it at school, but no one talked about it._

_“It’s a religious prohibition,” he said lamely._

_“What religion would prohibit love?” Lirael asked him, genuinely curious._

_“The religion of the one God,” he said._

_“Sounds like a cruel god,” Terael added, “keeping people that love each other from marrying.”_

_“It’s worse than that, there are laws against it, and they can be thrown in jail.” Nick frowned._

_Sarelle glared at him. “I’m glad we don’t live there, then. Imagine punishing someone for something that defines them. What does it matter who loves who? Love is love.” She took Terael’s hand and kissed her._

_He flinched back at their open display of affection, but when Lirael stiffened next to him, he knew he had offended her as well as Sarelle and Terael._

“Love is Love,” it had taken him a long time to get used to that idea, but he saw it in the Clayr’s glacier. He saw women with other women and it didn’t take him long to see that what he’d been taught was wrong. He went to Sarelle’s chambers and apologized to her for any offense he had given. She invited him in and he got to know both her and Terael. Sarelle had been born Clayr, but the Sight was weak in her and she was rarely a part of the watch. Terael was a wine merchant from Highbridge and a skilled Charter Mage. She came to the Glacier with her caravan three times a year, and she met Sarelle in the quartermaster’s office where Sarelle worked. They had met several times in the Perfumed Garden for liaisons before Terael had formally asked permission to move into the Glacier with Sarelle.

Terael was earthy and her bawdy sense of humor often had Nick’s cheeks flaming. When he and Lirael were in residence in the Abhorsen’s apartments in the Glacier, they often came to visit, and Lirael found she had a lot in common with Sarelle. They both felt slightly out of place amongst the Clayr, even though Sarelle had the sight, she was so rarely called and her vision was so weak she felt she didn’t belong. It would have been a crime to prevent these women who loved each other from being together, and Nick was seeing beyond his prim Ancelstierran upbringing.

_“Are men who love men able to live openly here, too?” He asked Lirael one day._

_She looked up from her book and met his eyes. “Of course they are.”_

_“Lirael, love. I would like it if Sarelle and Terael got married at the same time as us.”_

_“I think they’d like that, Nick. I’ll ask them.”_

He brought his attention back to the present. Sanar was wrapping their hands with a deep, rich green velvet ribbon inscribed with Charter Marks while Ryelle was doing the same for Sarelle and Terael. Where the ribbons touched both Lirael and Nick, they glowed silver and gold. Nick glanced behind him quickly and saw that Sarelle and Terael’s wrists were similarly wrapped with a glowing ribbon.

Sanar stood in front of Nick and Lirael and Ryelle stood in front of Sarelle and Terael.

The twins talked at the same time to each couple.

“We come here to join these couples in marriage in the eyes of the Charter and in the Sight of the Clayr. Are there any present who have rights to object to these unions?”

They paused briefly. No one spoke. Nick could hear his breathing and saw Lirael’s eyes widen as she knew it was finally happening. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

Sanar spoke alone next.

“Lirael, daughter of the Clayr, do you pledge yourself, in love, to this man, Nicholas Sayre?”

Lirael spoke with a firm voice. “I do so pledge.”

She turned to Nick.

“Nicholas Sayre, do you pledge yourself, in love, to this woman, Lirael, daughter of the Clayr?”

He gulped. “I do so pledge.”

The ribbon around their hands glowed brighter.

He heard Ryelle speak, but his eyes were only on Lirael’s.

“Sarelle, daughter of the Clayr, do you pledge yourself, in love, to this woman, Terael of Highbridge?”

“I do so pledge,” Sarelle said.

“Terael of Highbridge, do you pledge yourself, in love, to this woman, Sarelle, daughter of the Clayr?”

“Damn right, I do,” Terael said, “she’s not getting away from me.”

Ryelle stifled a laugh.

The twins spoke again in unison.

“Joined in love, joined in the eyes of the Charter and in the Sight of the Clayr. Foreseen, let no one foreswear the love that you have. Be a shield, each for the other; a protector, a friend, a lover. Support them in hard times and in fair. Fill them with love and let them fill you. Don’t be difficult.”

The last was directed at Lirael. Both she and Nick laughed, as did Touchstone.

Sanar put her hand on the ribbon binding their hands together, and Ryelle did the same for the other couple. They began chanting a spell. The ribbon glowed brighter, and the Charter Marks on Nick’s and Lirael’s forehead glowed. From the corner of his eye, he saw the same for Sarelle and Terael. Silver and gold Charter Marks dripped from where Nick held Lirael’s golden hand. When the spell was done, he felt it; there had always been a strange bond between him and Lirael, even when she had found him naked in a swamp, possessed by Orannis, he still had felt it. Now that bond was complete and he felt that the hole in his heart that been made by the shard of Orannis had finally been filled. It was covered by Lirael’s love. He could see in her eyes that she felt it, too. He suspected that she felt the hole in her heart caused by the lack of the Sight had been filled by his love.

The twins unbound the couples.

“We present to you, Lirael and Nick; and Sarelle and Terael, wed in the eyes of the Charter and the Sight of the Clayr.

There were hugs and kisses all around, even an Ancelstierran handshake for Nick from Sabriel before he pulled her into a hug. From the corner of the room they heard a bark.

“Now let’s go down to the reception and dance,” said the Disreputable Dog as Lirael rushed to her and pulled her into a fierce hug.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
